Variety's Scores

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For 17,847 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 IMAX: Hubble 3D
Lowest review score: 0 Divorce: The Musical
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9,172 out of 17847
  2. Mixed: 7,036 out of 17847
  3. Negative: 1,639 out of 17847
17847 movie reviews
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    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Urban Legend
    Before long, however, the suspense becomes repetitious and predictable. In its denouement, the film breaks faith with its audience, violating credibility in an attempt to deliver a surprise villain.
  2. Pecker
    A pleasant but ephemeral spoof that may disappoint Waters' hard-core fans while not recruiting many new devotees.
  3. Monument Ave.
    The only problem is that the great majority of screen time is devoted to the kind of loutish, drunken, small-minded, confrontational macho posturing that, in assorted ethnic stripes, has been paraded across the screen innumerable times in recent years.
  4. One True Thing
    As sensitively written, fluidly directed and expertly acted as it is, and as elemental as its dramatic conflicts may be, One True Thing has trouble breaking free of its limitations as a small-scale, modestly aimed family drama.
  5. Rush Hour
    A frankly formulaic but raucously entertaining action comedy.
  6. A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries
    The filmmakers give new saga a freer, looser form than is usual, allowing a superlative ensemble to develop rich characterizations.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Permanent Midnight
    Stiller’s attempted image makeover, though admirable, doesn’t make it. His perform-ance is strictly from the clenched-teeth, “Look at me, I’m acting!” school.
  8. Rounders
    Intermittently engaging but dramatically slack, this tale...is more interesting around the edges than it is at its core, thanks to the dull nature of the lead character played by Matt Damon.
  9. Simon Birch
    Johnson (who scripted "Grumpy Old Men") flattens out any promise so completely that the feature resembles nothing so much as a subpar "Hallmark Hall of Fame" entry.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Without Limits
    Robert Towne's Without Limits reps a distinct improvement over Steve James' Prefontaine in the filmmaking department.
  11. Knock Off
    Working from a formulaic script by Steven E. De Souza, Hark employs a variety of visual stratagems to keep the action fast and flashy.
  12. 54
    Director Mark Christopher gives the picture a brisk pace and a colorful, party-like mood that makes the experience painless and sporadically even enjoyable.
  13. Dead Man on Campus
    Although it falls far short of fulfilling its full potential as a dark comedy of desperation, Dead Man on Campus is a modestly amusing trifle that merits a passing grade as lightweight entertainment.
  14. Your Friends & Neighbors
    Like Mamet, LaBute's approach is precise, stylized and detached, and he also follows Mamet the director in positioning his characters close to the camera, as if they were addressing the audience directly, without much depth of field -- or air to breathe.
  15. Next Stop Wonderland
    Low on plot but high on charm and personality, Next Stop Wonderland is a sly, hand-crafted indie that is very alive and attentive to its characters' feelings and foibles.
  16. Blade
    Though slick and diverting in some aspects, increasingly silly pic has trouble meshing disparate elements --- horror, superhero fantasy, straight-up action --- into a workable whole.
  17. The Eel
    While the symbolism of the eel itself is a bit obvious, Imamura has created a rich tapestry of characters and situations, all of it vividly brought to life with pristine visuals and a generous emotional warmth.
  18. Slums of Beverly Hills
    A notch or two above the level of a TV sitcom, Slums of Beverly Hills, Tamara Jenkins' semi-autobiographical feature directorial debut, is a bawdy, extremely broad comedy.
  19. How Stella Got Her Groove Back
    Like "Waiting to Exhale" except more so, film jerks from scene to scene with little sense of rhythm, continuity or dramatic shaping.
    • 12 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Avengers
    What's missing is chemistry: the right blend of seriousness and whimsy, and charmingly compelling interplay between leads Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman.
  21. Return to Paradise
    None of the characters is given much depth or meaningful backgrounding, leaving the capable thesps with plenty of anguish and emotion to play but not much else.
  22. Snake Eyes
    Cage supplies beaucoup energy, but his highly compromised hustler cop character provides little else in which he can invest his talent. Sinise wears an increasingly grim demeanor in a part that comes to make no sense, and John Heard's role as a local power broker gets lost in the shuffle.
  23. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
    While plot mechanics aren't wildly imaginative, pic nonetheless delivers requisite jolts in an above-average package.
  24. BASEketball
    The vulgar, obvious humor of Zucker brother David and "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone elicits easy, guilty laughs, yet the material has an underlying innocence that's just shy of good clean fun.
  25. Ever After
    Barrymore continues to prove herself as a performer of extraordinary range and charisma, and is simply sublime in the leading role.
  26. The Governess
    Minnie Driver gets a showy workout in The Governess, a beautifully crafted, if ultimately opaque, study of art, sensuality and outsider status in early Victorian England.
  27. The Negotiator
    The teaming of Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey, two of the most highly regarded actors around, in perfectly fitting roles that call for a battle of wits and wills, proves to be a shrewd piece of casting, and the best element of The Negotiator.
  28. The Parent Trap
    Richardson, who gracefully sways through a memorable drunk scene, and Quaid, whose megawatt smile has never been more dazzling, are disarmingly charming as the parents. And that's important; if the actors were any less engaging, the audience might not be so forgiving of their characters.
  29. Saving Private Ryan
    A searingly visceral combat picture, Steven Spielberg’s third World War II drama is arguably second to none as a vivid, realistic and bloody portrait of armed conflict.
  30. Western
    Viewers who don’t share the director’s obvious affection for his often funny characters will find the pic too long and too diffuse, but its cumulative rewards are ample.
  31. Lolita
    The bad news, however, is that after an intriguing opening stretch, and despite Jeremy Irons' potent lead performance, the overlong film becomes repetitive, flat and often dull.
  32. The Mask of Zorro
    The return of the legendary swordsman is well served by a grandly mounted production in the classical style.
  33. There's Something About Mary
    Crudely made, somewhat overlong and larded with plenty of things that don't work, pic stands as proof positive that a comedy can be far from perfect and still hit the bull's-eye if it delivers when it counts in its big scenes.
  34. Pi
    The film's imaginative, diverse images create a mind's-eye urban claustrophobia; such intensity may exhaust over 85 minutes' course, but it's never less than impressive.
  35. Lethal Weapon 4
    The quintessence of the buddy cop pic, "LW4" is big on action, playful banter and just enough plot to keep our attention from wandering.
  36. Hands on a Hardbody: The Documentary
    A classic piece of Americana, a down-home documentary that not only produces gales of laughter but also manages, by the end, to come together as a highly unlikely metaphor for the rigors of human existence.
  37. Armageddon
    Much of the confusion, as well as the lack of dramatic rhythm or character development, results directly from Bay's cutting style, which resembles a machine gun stuck in the firing position for 2 and a half hours.
  38. Out of Sight
    Reveals Soderbergh in peak form, as he endows Leonard’s postmodern yarn with a meticulously detailed mise en scene that helps each member of his terrific ensemble soar.
  39. Smoke Signals
    Breezy, often self-mocking tone proves fresh and invigorating.
  40. Buffalo '66
    Alive to cinematic ideas, generous to its actors and peppered with unexpected humor, this ultimately sweet-natured low-budgeter is nonetheless riddled with enough off-putting and digressive material.
  41. Dr. Dolittle
    Slim on story and rife with scatological jokes, the film may strike a chord with pre-teens but misses for an older crowd despite some nifty effects and broad humor.
  42. I Went Down
    Though McDonald and Gleeson pair off well as the unlikely fellow travelers, and have some funny moments of physical shtick, the picture mostly springs to life when either Caffrey, as Grogan, or the excellent Doyle, as French, are onscreen.
  43. The X Files
    Falls somewhere in between standing on its own feet as a real movie worth the price of a ticket and merely being a glorified TV episode refitted for theaters.
  44. Mulan
    A rich dramatic tapestry lightly stained by some strained comedy, rigorous political correctness and perhaps more adherence to Disney formula than should have been the case in one of the studio's most adventurous and serious animated features.
  45. Henry Fool
    Poetic, bawdy, contemplative, often side-wrenchingly funny and finally quite touching, this tale about a nerdy garbage man whose life is changed by an egocentric hobo philosopher is flawed only by its length.
  46. Edge of Seventeen
    Unpretentious, funny and touching, Edge of Seventeen rates as a quintessential Amerindie sleeper.
  47. High Art
    Compassionate and deft as Cholodenko's helming is, pic's overall impact largely depends on its central triangle.
  48. Six Days Seven Nights
    Sprinkled with just enough laughs, close shaves and compromising positions to keep audiences mildly interested, this old-fashioned popcorn picture is agreeably breezy and colorful, but lacks the pizzazz and star chemistry of a genre ancestor such as "Romancing the Stone."
  49. Can't Hardly Wait
    A mediocre attempt to recapture the exuberance and candid portraiture of such high school movie classics as "American Graffiti," "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Dazed and Confused."
  50. Dirty Work
    Highly reminiscent of Kingpin in its willingness to try anything for a laugh, Dirty Work is a shameless and sporadically hilarious comedy about two thirtysomething underachievers who start a revenge for hire business.
  51. A Perfect Murder
    The dilemma in this Perfect Murder is its singular failure at creating a rooting interest for a character or situation.
  52. The Truman Show
    A gemlike picture crafted with rare and immaculate precision.
  53. The Last Days of Disco
    Whit Stillman's stiff directorial approach ill suits the sensual ambiance of the club scene so intently depicted, and the mostly self-conscious, uptight characters seem to have made a left turn out of "Metropolitan" and walked through the wrong door to turn up in this flamboyant druggie scene.
  54. Hope Floats
    A dreadfully dull, completely conventional story of a young wife's recuperation from being unceremoniously dumped, this is a by-the-numbers bit of emotional calculation without a single fresh, original or offbeat move in its system, apart from a nifty opening sequence.
  55. The Opposite of Sex
    Roos’ talent for vivid, jump-off-the-screen dialogue remains unquestioned, but his direction is considerably more spotty.
  56. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
    Johnny Depp's impersonation of the Thompson figure is effective up to a point, but it's hard to imagine any segment of the public embracing this off-putting, unrewarding slog through the depths of the drug culture.
  57. Bulworth
    An uncommonly smart, sharp and irreverent American picture.
  58. Godzilla
    Despite all the flash and filigree, this monster movie is curiously -- and conspicuously -- lacking in heart.
  59. The Horse Whisperer
    Directing himself for the first time, Redford has lavished his usual meticulous care on popular material that comes alive on the screen in ways that it never could on the page.
  60. Clockwatchers
    What starts as a bright look at the dim lives of temps in a large company slides into unfortunate digressions and drabness in Clockwatchers.
  61. Quest for Camelot
    A lightweight but likable fantasy that offers a playfully feminist twist to Arthurian legends.
  62. Deep Impact
    The season's first comet-targets-Earth special effects extravaganza is spectacular enough in its cataclysmic scenes of the planet being devastated by an unstoppable fireball, but proves far from thrilling in the down time spent with a largely dull assortment of troubled human beings.
  63. Shooting Fish
    Though the script never makes a convincing case for the lads as '90s Robin Hoods, it's restlessly inventive, with a pleasant, rather than rib-cracking, humor and likable touch of naivete.
  64. He Got Game
    Lacking the moral indignation, outrage and militant politics that marked Lee's earlier work, this vibrantly colorful film is a tad too soft at the center, and arguably the director's most mainstream movie.
  65. Wilde
    Toplining British comedian/wit Stephen Fry in a once-in-a-lifetime role as the brilliant, acerbic playwright, and mounted with a care and affection in all departments that squeezes the most from its $10 million budget, movie is a tony biopic that manages to combine an upfront portrayal of the scribe's gayness with an often moving examination of his broader emotions and artistic ideals.
  66. Les Misérables
    The third American bigscreen rendition of Victor Hugo's classic novel, Bille August's Les Miserables is without a doubt the most emotionally powerful and handsomely mounted production of the story yet.
  67. Sliding Doors
    A frothy, lightweight romantic comedy that strives to seem richer and more complex than it really is.
  68. The Big Hit
    Unquestionably a slick piece of goods. The training and experience of Wong and his crew --- culled largely from such action series as "La Femme Nikita" and "Once a Thief" --- keep the film lively and vivid.
  69. Two Girls and a Guy
    Often a gutsy, intelligent writer, Toback has yet to prove himself decisively as a director, and this, his first fictional effort behind the camera in a decade, shows his talents to be as variable as ever.
  70. The Object of My Affection
    Tries to mix the messy realities of mismatched relationships with the structural neatness of a musical-comedy view of the world, with mild, occasionally diverting results.
  71. Suicide Kings
    A smart and snappy drama tinged with dark humor and brimming with self-confidence.
  72. Nightwatch
    The new outing - which retains the essential twists of the original, a hit overseas that was never released Stateside - has been physically enhanced with American production values and a marquee cast, but much of the earlier film's humanity and mordant humor have been lost in translation
  73. Species II
    An unsavory and unsatisfying blend of dumb plotting, leering lasciviousness and full-bore gore, pic should warp-speed to video shelves.
  74. City of Angels
    The endlessly resourceful Nicolas Cage, as a celestial angel, and a terrifically engaging Meg Ryan, as a pragmatic surgeon, create such blissful chemistry that they elevate the drama to a poetic level seldom reached in a mainstream movie.
  75. 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain
    Only small children with limited attention spans will be impressed by the lackluster kung-foolishness in 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain.
  76. The Players Club
    Ice Cube continues his evolution from hard-core rapper to multihyphenate filmmaker with "The Players Club," a messy but lively B-movie that recalls the more spirited comedic dramas of the '70s blaxploitation era.
  77. The Spanish Prisoner
    The picture is a devilishly clever series of reversals that keeps you guessing to the very end.
  78. Lost in Space
    A pic that provides one hour's decent, eye-filling ride, then crashes and burns amid some of the worst writing since ... well, since scenarist/co-producer Akiva Goldsman's last effort, "Batman & Robin."
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mercury Rising
    Mercury Rising won't raise many viewers' temperatures. A somber suspenser with an oddly disconnected assortment of characters and a lack of freshly conceived action, this tale of a maverick FBI agent who takes on malevolent government forces to protect an orphaned autistic child serves up some dramatic moments but never legitimately convinces.
  80. Barney's Great Adventure
    Arguably the most critic-proof picture of the decade, Barney's Great Adventure will delight everyone who can't wait to see it and be a grin-and-bear-it experience for those who must accompany members of the former group.
  81. The Newton Boys
    An extremely handsome production that meticulously evokes the 1920s, and a likable male-dominated cast, headed by Matthew McConaughey in his best screen performance to date, only partially compensate for a story that's too diffuse and lacks a discernible point of view that would make it dramatically engaging.
  82. Wild Things
    Not only is it highly unusual, but the picture is chock-full of surprise and unexpected humor to leaven its thriller trappings.
  83. Primary Colors
    A modern immorality tale with a keen, observant edge.
  84. Wide Awake
    Reflecting the zeitgeist of the last decade, with children increasingly having to come to terms with the untimely deaths of parents and friends as a result of AIDS and other illnesses, Wide Awake tackles its issues with an admirably uncompromising honesty, though it suffers from being dramatically obvious. [16 Mar 1998, p.64]
    • Variety
  85. Fireworks
    This contemplative drama about a tough ex-cop tying up the loose ends of his life and taking his terminally ill wife on a farewell journey is pure poetry.
  86. The Man in the Iron Mask
    An unusually sober and serious-minded telling of Alexandre Dumas' classic tale, this handsome costumer is routinely made and comes up rather short in boisterous excitement.
  87. Funny Games
    The film is shocking and upsetting, but never truly gets under the skin the way this kind of material often can. Whatever reservations are prompted by Haneke's approach, his direction is controlled and edgy. [20 May 1997, p.52]
    • Variety
  88. U.S. Marshals
    Stuart Baird's new thriller is inferior to the Andrew Davis movie in every respect: script, acting, rhythm and even tech credits.
  89. Love and Death on Long Island
    This is arguably Hurt's best role in years, and he bites into it with relish, managing to seem both manipulative and vulnerable, dour and droll at the same time.
  90. The Big Lebowski
    Spiked with wonderfully funny sequences and some brilliantly original notions, The Big Lebowski, a pseudo-mystery thriller with a keen eye and ear for societal mores and modern figures of speech, nonetheless adds up to considerably less than the sum of its often scintillating parts.
  91. Hush
    Unfortunately, almost everything about the film is so unbelievable and misjudged that only the most gullible audiences will feel any transporting thrill at the end other than from the movie finally being over.
  92. The Real Blonde
    Enjoyable, if sometimes scattered, comic exploration of the quest for integrity and depth in a world wowed by artifice and superficiality.
  93. Senseless
    Created as a comic vehicle for the lead actor, pic depends entirely too much on Wayans to carry the day, but at this point he is far more eager and willing than he is funny.
  94. Palmetto
    Surprises are reserved for the final half-hour, at which point the slow-paced Palmetto has long since fossilized as a routine exercise in ceiling-fan, sweaty-forehead noir-by-numbers.
  95. Dark City
    What they have done is taken a few second-hand ideas from noir and speculative fiction and mixed them in occasionally striking ways, even if, in the end, the result isn't all that much fun.
  96. Dangerous Beauty
    While there’s much to admire in the film, both its setting and tone seem out of touch with prevailing tastes.
  97. The Wedding Singer
    Director Frank Coraci and scripter Tim Herlihy work in concert to maintain a quality of farce rooted in human comedy.
  98. Sphere
    An empty shell.
  99. The Replacement Killers
    This mechanical effort is studied rather than heartfelt and will disappoint aficionados and thwart potential fans.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Night Flier
    A creepy vampire tale that also offers some clever commentary on bloodthirsty tabloid journalists. While not the most memorable of King adaptations, it’s far from the worst of them.
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